Stepping from a cab
onto a rainy street
in New York City
where I live
I’m splashed
by cabs that pass at speed
forcing force sheets of
dirty water up and over
enemies on foot,
like me.
Like that,
the risks I take
in loving you are sure.
Hiking on the streets
in summertime
in New York City
where I live
when it’s too hot
to walk and just the heat
makes blisters on my feet
when sanity is living
in the country for the season
only few remain
to face the heat,
like me.
Like that,
the pain I feel
in loving you is sure.
Along the ways I walk,
the sweet green hedges
that you offer hide
barbed wire that’s
the darkness and the hunger
of your inner self,
and all the little flowers
that you leave for me
hide tiny insects
in their hearts.
When you’re very sweet to me,
you double round the corner,
fast, just after,
leaving just the
sound of slamming doors.
Intentions that I live
to be myself,
despite the pain I feel
when I love you, despite
your sometimes feet of clay,
are true and real.
Your dispassion,
standing cooly there,
outside my home of love,
will not pull down its walls
that shelter us,
nor will the often chill
within your heart
tear warmth and sweetness
from my love,
to toss them in the wind.
…
I have no way to end this poem.
The future will provide its final lines.
I’m feeling dramatic today, it’s true,
but the pain I write in is real.
I want to see your eyes, see the boundary between the moment and you.
This is what you get for being really nice to me, then going away right after:
Whinging and tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.
Civilization has fled for the nonce.
I’m sitting at your feet on an uncushioned low stool of woven thorns, not of willows.
